Vorshlag E46 Alpha - 330Ci LSx Build Thread

[greenmonster138]

Any Updates?

[Pzary3233]

Doh how did I miss this thread!

Fair, talk with RAO, he did some Can-bus work and got everything working in his 5 series. including climate control.

Otherwise AWESOME THREAD!

[modular93fox]

So thats the new Holley LS retro pan?
http://www.holley.com/302-1.asp
just double checking. I too will be swapping a ls (more than likely 5.3) into my new 323. Bought it dirt cheap due to a overheated motor. Perfect exterior, Super clean interior/ exception is the shifter and e-brake boot... dry and cracking... plus its a 5spd
Have you found a solution to the RPM sensor? I thought about getting a custom power steering pulley machined up and simply using some tube spacers and install the factory bmw crank sensor wheel on the p/s pulley. the p/s pulley would end up being the same OD as the crank shaft. Not the prettiest, but functional.


this is the quick cad drawing i whipped up to illustrate the idea.
clint

[tonytone4143]

Looks interesting

[Fair]

Yea, we're about to bring this E46 Alpha car to our new shop, which finally got 2 coats of epoxy floor coating and the clear coat is wrapping up today. After a couple days of curing we'll bring all of the cars over.

Next week we have a new welder/fabricator starting, and the E46 LSx will be high on his agenda. We will also look at doing the dual-PCM set-up, to keep ABS and gauges working. We have two OEM BMW E46 330 engine/body harnesses, so we can potentially keep all of the sensors and crank trigger feeding data to the BMW "DME", and the GM "PCM" can run the LSx on its own harness. That's what we're looking at to avoid CAN-BUS black box programming magic.

More soon,

[Fair]

Project Update for Oct 25, 2011: It has been a busy month since we brought the white E46 Alpha car over to the new shop. We took the E30 V8 to Florida and won the $2011 GRM Challenge, which was pretty cool. Now that we are back, and after bringing 7 cars to the new shop and getting a lift installed, we are wrenching on two neglected E46s. First up was my blue 2001 E46 330Ci that we ran last year in NASA "TTD" class. It got a new 2005 M54 3.0L longblock, a brand new OEM balancer (long story!), and finally is driving around, logging some street miles before it goes back on track.



The white 2001 BMW 330Ci "E46 Alpha" was also worked on last week, and I'll share that little step forward here. We had a customer asking us to make one of our Vorshlag, collapsible, racing U-joint steering shaft assemblies for the E46 chassis, to go with our existing E30, Z3 and E36 offerings. So we used the white 2001 as the guinea pig, since it needed one with the V8 for better header clearance. It took a few hours to make the first prototype and its on the car and working well.



Now that we've got a full time welder/fabricator that joined us a month ago, plus our other mechanic on staff, we're beginning to build turn-key LSx BMWs - two E36 builds are already underway. We will also continue development on the E46 Alpha car, and the prototype headers and motor mounts will be finished soon.



We've since added this Vorshlag E46 steering shaft as a new product on our website and have sold one to an E46 track user. No more sloppy rag joint in the steering shaft, its all good.

Stay tuned to this thread for more updates as we attack the V8 swap development, run across other systems we can upgrade or make parts for, or otherwise do any significant wrenching on this V8 prototype.

Thanks,

[tonytone4143]

very nice, now lets see some progress.

[Fair]

Project Update for Nov 4, 2011: We are one step closer to building the ultimate BMW E46 V8! Just a quick update, but it is an important milestone. In the week since my last update the guys in our shop have been working on the E46 Alpha car, between other projects. They have finished the motor mounts, with everything fully TIG welded by our fabricator Ryan, and the LS1/T56 drivetrain is securely in position.



The left picture above was pretty cool - we didn't stage that, I just looked up and noticed... "hmmm, that's 3 generations of BMWs with Vorshlag LS1 swaps lined up there". And in that same picture there's an E36 LS1 swap underway (black 1995 M3), and behind the Z3 is another E36 LS1 swap about to be kicked off (1992 325is). So we have... 5 LS1 swaps built or on-going in our shop at the moment. Kinda crazy.



Look how low that aluminum LS1 block sits in the chassis! And with 6 of the 8 cylinders located behind the front axle centerline, that's good for lower CG and better fore:aft weight balance than the long & tall straight BMW 6. That gave me an idea, and I took these pictures to show how different the LS1 motor length and installed location is compared to the stock M54 motor:



And fore:aft location of other Vorshlag V8 swaps, the E30 and E36/Z3 (can you see why I'm not a fan of E30 LS1 swaps?):



Its not easy to measure the Center of Gravity of a motor in a chassis, but in these two front shots you can see the outline of the heavy cast aluminum block/heads (ignoring the plastic intake manifolds and covers) of the LS1 and he M54 in the E46 chassis, and it gives you an idea of which drivetrain has the higher CG (M54):



Here are some close-ups of the motor mounts, which are easier to see with the heads off:



Once the prototype headers and driveshaft are finalized we will go back and make production fixtures for the finished motor mounts and trans crossmember, then we can start making those in production batches. The plan is to be at that point by December, unless the shop gets buried in customer fab/race prep/suspension work.

We located another LS1 starter to use for mock-up yesterday, and Ryan will attack the header fabrication next. There is one piece of tack-welded sheet metal on the driver's side (that forms the base of a heat shield around the ABS module) that will have to be removed to clear the full length headers, but we will make a new heat shield to go back in its place. We are NOT removing or relocating the ABS or brake booster components. Most of the handful of completed E46 LS1 swaps I've seen do away with the ABS completely, which I feel is a huge mistake, and detracts from one of the best parts of the BMW E46.



The E46 LS1 prototype full-length header construction will be a huge amount of fabrication work, but it always is painful on that first set. This is where our economies of scale come in: Since we plan to make these headers and kits in quantities more than 1, the typical high cost for one-off custom headers and mounts won't hit our E46 LS1 swap kit customers in the wallet.

We have all of the bends/collectors/flanges/supplies on-hand and I'll show an update as the prototype headers are coming together. Remember - we don't work on this car every day, but I am scheduling more fab time on it as we get freed up from other customer jobs. Once we have one set of headers built, they will be sent off to our header manufacturer for volume production.

More soon!

[Chukjagr]

Wow, that looks very nice. Plenty of room up front for the accessories. Any ideas on how close this would be to working in a Z4?

[Pzary3233]

The hunt for a blown up e46 M3 has started....

[greenmonster138]

Any hopes for an end of the year, or Happy New Years surprise with some updates?

[weaksauce]

when i was at their shop last week I don't think they had worked on it much. they had a set of headers tacked together for it on the pass side, but i don't remember seeing anything on the drivers side.

[R33GTR]

They aren't going to give this any priority until someone starts paying them.

[Fair]

They aren't going to give this any priority until someone starts paying them.

Nah, its not like that at all.

Oiy, lemmie show you what we've done since the last update. I've been trying to make time to crop and edit these pics and do an update here for this car for the last 2-3 weeks.

I will skip starting the 3 day holiday weekend and miss dinner with my wife tonight just to give you guys an update on the E46 LS1. Gosh!













There, is anyone appeased?

We're actually further along than these pics show - these were snapped from 1-2 weeks ago. I need a full time "web update guy" to give me some back-up. We've been super busy, and I haven't had a lot of time to update all of our project threads. I've got 9 or 10 active project build threads going at once now and I'm juggling them on close to a dozen forums, and its all I can do to keep my other daily Vorshlag duties here up to date. I have one of my employees now tasked to try to take up the slack for my slow updates, so don't worry. As we continue to grow I will keep hiring more people to keep the "active on the internet" aspect of our business... active.

So where were we - oh yea, the passenger LSx header prototype is done and fully TIG welded at each joint (looks better than the picture above, as it has that missing bend added). Driver's side header... (lemmie go back in the shop and peek)... OK, it looks like it is 3/4 complete, in steel. The plastic mock-up is done, and clearances checked. We ran out short of 1-3/4" mandrel bends for that header on Monday, but Matt ordered more. With the holiday shipping mess they were probably delayed getting here. Thought they'd be here today... oh wait... OK I just walked around the entire warehouse area and shop again and I think the box with those bends did get here today. The guys in the shop were too busy doing a motor swap today to attack the rest of the driver's header. We were hit with several E36 LS1 orders this week and just shipped out 3 kits today, including some internationally, after a big batch of E36 parts came in from powder coat. Its just nuts around here right now, sorry guys. Plus we've got a ton of racing going on, and suspension development, and shock and camber plate sales.

Vorshlag is open all next week except Monday, and my super awesome fab guy Ryan that I hired back in October is working all week on the other header and then the collectors and other bits. There have been all sorts of things going back onto that E36 that were missing when we bought it, to try to make it a fully functional street car when its done. I've also picked up a good LS1 5.7L aluminum longblock block to have re/built up, and have a 6-spd for it, too.

We're moving right along on the E46 Alpha, considering the volume of new projects, turn-key LS1 swaps, and customer fabrication work I've thrown at my technicians and fab guy at our new shop.

Patience...

[hefftone]

That orange header build stuff looks badass!

Just update your website and let us know.

[douglee25]

Does anyone know what the name of the flexible orange pipe material?

Doug

[hefftone]

Looks like icengineworks. Its probably pretty expensive.

[birdman2447]

looks great!, how much of a pain is the wiring aspect of the e46 swap due to can-bus?

[MPD47]

Progress looks great. Really looking forward to getting a set of mounts and headers for my track car, asap!

[douglee25]

Looks like icengineworks. Its probably pretty expensive.

Thanks. I couldn't figure out where I had seen that before. It looks pretty trick.

Doug

[IWannaBMW]

Love this build, i'd love an LS1 in my slow ass 323!

I do have a question, how do you like the e46 vs. e36 for autocross? In stock-ish form. Meaning no chevy engine swaps lol.


What kinda salary do you offer, i may apply for a job there .

[Fair]

Does anyone know what the name of the flexible orange pipe material?

Doug

IceEngineWorks. Sort of like a Lego-set for making header mock-ups. These plastic bends and straights snap together, come in various diameters and commonly available bend radii.



We saw them at PRI in 2006 and our AST/Vorshlag booth was across the asile from them at PRI in 2007. I spent some serious time in their booth that year playing with these kits - had to have them!



Its pretty expensive (figure $1000 to have enough bits to make a single 4 cylinder header!), but we've used it on 2 cars already and it is a big help for making prototype or one-off headers. Cuts development time down dramatically. Some fab guys don't like them, while others understand how they can save time and make for more test iterations before cutting steel.

looks great!, how much of a pain is the wiring aspect of the e46 swap due to can-bus?

A huge one. But we'll manage.

Progress looks great. Really looking forward to getting a set of mounts and headers for my track car, asap!

Yes, we're still on track for early 2012Q1 delivery for Stage 0 parts. Motor mounts, trans mount, steering shaft are all done, prototype headers are 90% done in metal (and Ryan is back there working on the last header today), and the driveshaft only takes 2-3 days to make. That's pretty much the Stage 0 kit. We'll confirm the fit of all of these parts all together, then pull them off and start making the production fixtures very soon.

Love this build, i'd love an LS1 in my slow ass 323!

I do have a question, how do you like the e46 vs. e36 for autocross? In stock-ish form. Meaning no chevy engine swaps lol.

Well, that depends. First, all BMW 3 series cars suck in 100% stock form - severe lack of OEM negative camber travel will simply EAT front tires. If you look at Street Touring classes, however, you can fix a lot of the problems inherent with the OEM suspension. Lowering, camber plates, better shocks all do wonders.

The E36 non-M is a great STX contender (and even wins at Nats some years), but has some tire fitment limitations (255mm tires is about the limit), as well as some negative camber travel limitations that are in the spindle/LCA, but it is a pretty good all around car. That's a little more modded than "stock-ish", but you get the picture. These are getting older, and harder to find clean/non-ragged out ones. 328is or 325is manual is what you want. Forget about finding a non-sunroof version - impossible in 325 and super rare in 328is. We have a LOT of set-up knowledge and parts avilable for STX E36 cars.



The E46 330 (non-M) is also a good car for STX class, can can fit 265mm tires and even 10" wheel under rolled/stock looking fenders. Its has some of its own limitations, namely the M54 engine has an even more problematic oil pump drive, and harmonic balancer failures are too common. If you fix those issues and keep revs under 6000 rpm its great. The later ZHP cars make a tick more power and some of those came with no-sunroof, which is nice for taller drivers (head-room) and about 32 pounds lighter. Rear gearing can be an issue, and none of these came with limited slips, which can be a somewhat expensive endeavor making them that way. Same basic suspension, little more power than an E36, and a little more weight. But it can fit more wheel and tire and it is a lot newer, so finding clean cars is easier. They have gotten much more affordable of late, too. Matt Murphy here on Bimmerforums has a damned nice E46 STX 330.



The E36 M3 and E46 M3 aren't particularly classed well in Street Touring, being in STU against the AWD boost buggies. I strongly urge most people to stay out of STU unless they have an EVO or STi. The only good place to race wither of these M3s i in BSP -> the new CSP class, where they will be finally segregated from the AWD rally cars. That's the land of giant Hoosiers, aftermarket EFI, and some serious spending, however. Far from "Stock-ish".



Neither car is competitive in STU at the moment, and nobody has even trophied in STU in a 2WD non-turbo car since... 2009? I think that was 13th, too. Last time one podium'd in STU open was 2006. One day the STAC will make a class between STX and STU for the non-turbo cars too fast for STX or STR. One day...

What kinda salary do you offer, i may apply for a job there .

Well... pay in this industry is not as good as the traditional "automotive repair business", I'm afraid. Most aftermarket-racing-oriented shops pay less than the "repair shop" or dealership type places. It comes down to competitiveness - the dealer might charge $125 an hour but shops like ours can only charge $65-75 an hour for race prep. Some of it is regional, too. Anything that is more "fun" or racing oriented, and less boring than "repair", pays less. We're also fully staffed at the moment, and I have a stack of resumes 2 inches thick, but hey, you never know - send me yours via e-mail.

Thanks,

[douglee25]

That's super expensive for those plastic fittings. I did check out the pricing. Boy they are making a HUGE profit on those kits. That's probably $20 in plastic and they are charging $1000.

Doug

[hefftone]

That's super expensive for those plastic fittings. I did check out the pricing. Boy they are making a HUGE profit on those kits. That's probably $20 in plastic and they are charging $1000.

Doug

Thats kinda the way it goes....It's innovative, and is designed to save other people time/money in fab/development costs. Its probably fairly low volume too. Kinda like engine swap mounts....

[douglee25]

I agree to a point. Definitely highway robbery though.

I have seen/played with a toy or something that looks just like those pieces, but I can't recall the name right now.

Doug